to return to your place in the text.To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the
Good reason. The sad truth that all of us who are old
enough knows is we do not live in a "Santa Claus" world.
Children's visions of sugar plums are washed away with the hot
tears of grown-up disappointment and despair. Disease and death
are constant companions. The fear and foreboding of which Jesus
spoke greet us at every turn. Somehow we need to be reminded
that this misery is not the end of the story.
For me that reminder is right in the middle of this text.
Jesus has said that terrible things are in store - we can
understand his imagery to be apocalyptic, end-of-the-world poetry
or we can understand it to mean the awful stuff that each of us
confronts in the course of our lives (and that is the way I
choose to interpret it - I do not worry about the end of the
world; I worry about the here-and-now). Then, in a few words
that jump out at me as if they were printed in flashing neon:
"Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise
your heads, because your redemption is drawing near." YES! The
disappointment, the despair, the disease, even the death do not
have the final word. GOD DOES!
Abuelo knew that. Abuelo is the Spanish word for grandpa.
It is the name I used for my step-father - Fred Tinley became the
grandfather to my children that my Dad never had the chance to
be, so I gave him that moniker. I first got to know Abuelo when
I was only a boy - he and my father had been in seminary together
at Princeton. Upon graduation, Dad went into parish ministry
while Abuelo answered the call to the mission field (Mexico), and
Fred and Isabel served there with distinction for half a century.
They all kept contact through the years - the congregation my
father served provided financial support for the Presbyterian
mission in Mexico. On their occasional furloughs, Abuelo and his
family would fly up for a visit (he flew his own plane, and, as a
boy, he gave me my first-ever flight). In one of those strange
and delightful twists of fortune, several years ago, Abuelo and
Mom began to correspond somewhat more than they had previously.
With the passing of his wife and her husband, both were lonely
and both were ready for a relationship of loving support and
companionship.
It was a hoot watching their reversion to being teenagers in
their courtship. It was a joy for me to able to officiate at
their wedding (how many sons get such an honor?). Years before,
my sweet mother had told me, upon my announcement that Christie
and I were getting married, "Son, that's fine...but you ought not
to have children." Say WHAT??? She went on, "God was very wise
in allowing us to have children when we are young; it is the only
time we have enough energy to handle them. You are OLD (I was
33) and set in your ways. You would never have enough patience
to deal with children." Oh, REALLY!!! As you know, this time
Mom was wrong, wrong, wrong, and, on her wedding day, it was
puckish pleasure for me to say to her, "Mom, you ought not to
have children, because you are old and set in your ways..." Yes,
I know she was 74, but remember the story of Abraham and Sarah.
She stuck her tongue out at me.
Sadly, their time together would not be as long as any of us
would have hoped. Abuelo began to display signs of Alzheimer's,
then, just a few days ago, the diagnosis of Liver Cancer came.
Liver Cancer can be an especially painful, and none of us wanted
to imagine what life would be like for them in the coming months.
How would they manage? In-home care? Nursing Home? We never
had to answer. On Friday, Abuelo went home...home for Christmas.
For him, no doubt, a blessing. For Mom, no doubt, the feeling of
a world crashing in that Jesus talked about so long ago.
How will we deal with this? I suspect that Abuelo would say
(and after all those years in Mexico, in Spanish, no doubt),
"Alzad vuestras cabezas, porque vuestra redención se acerca...
Raise your heads, because your redemption is near." Eyes UP!
Chin off your chest! This is NOT the end of the story. This is
where the rubber meets the road. This is the heart of the
gospel. There was never any question about Abuelo's faith.
In the Peanuts comic strip, Linus and Lucy are standing at
the window looking out at the rain falling. Lucy says to Linus,
"Boy, look at it rain...What if it floods the earth?" Linus, the
resident biblical scholar for the Peanuts, answers, "It will
never do that...in the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised
Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise
is the rainbow." With a smile on her face, Lucy replies, "Linus,
you've taken a great load off my mind." To which Linus responds,
"Sound theology has a way of doing that."(1)
I need that reminder this weekend. Mom needs that reminder.
Jonathan Slaughter needs that reminder [a young man in our congregation whose college roommate was killed in a traffic accident on Tuesday]; Judy Gibson needs that
reminder; Louise Roberts needs that reminder [two ladies in our congregation who recently lost their husbands]. We ALL need that
reminder at difficult times in our lives. But then, what better
time to hear it than at the beginning of our preparations for
welcoming the Christ child?
We live in anxious times, and so did the people who lived
when Christ walked on this earth. The good news in our Gospel
today is that, despite the fact that these ARE anxious times, so
anxious sometimes that it looks like the end of the world, Jesus
says that we can stand and lift our heads high...EYES UP!...for
our redemption is near. And that is good news indeed.
Let us pray.
O God, we confess to being frightened at the world around
us. We see awful tragedy and we wonder how to cope. We are
grateful for the reminder that, at the end of history, whether it
be our own or this whole wide world's, you are there and ready to
welcome us. Help us to remember that in the midst of the dark
days of our life. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen!
1. Quoted by Bass Mitchell, via Ecunet, "Sermonshop Sermons," 11/24/97
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